Arnon

Currently I'm reading Graham Greene's 'The End of the Affair' and I wondered if you read this novel by the time you were writing 'Phantom Pain'.

I 've got days where people seem to think I'm gay. Today was one of those days. This far I haven't been able to figure out a way to benefit from this misconception.

This is common practice, at least it was. I have heard a lot about sportsmen, mostly boxing champions, who loved to spend their hard earned money like that in local pubs: destroy and pay! A matter of pride, in the good old days.

Its a nice position, but it is even nicer to be in a position to change the rules of this game. Reject the money and give this babyface a nice firm deserving proper beating instead.

Jan A

I read “The end of the affair” in the eighties.
A girlfriend gave it to me.
In an essay on the Danish writer Grøndahl I wrote substantially about “The End of the Affair” as well.

Greene/Grunberg

In the eighties already... Well, probably it's my obsession that I see a lot of parallels between the two books (e.g. the following themes: where does a relationship end? versus seeing a relationship as a lunchbreak that never ended; hiring someone who trails you versus your short story about this topic in 'Grunberg Around the World'; the narcissistic I-figure as a writer; adultery; presenting a summary of a bill in a novel) although I certainly wouldn't say that Phantom Pain is sort of a copy of The End of the Affair - and I realize this might be a paralipsic remark.
It seems I'm in desperate need of a reading group. Or a psychiatrist.

This essay about Grondahl, can I find it somewhere on the net or in a book you published?

Phantom Pain is a great novel, 'by the way'. As well as your short stories in NRC written during the late nineties. In a way I like them better than your present works, maybe because you seemed more desperate and vulnerable in the late nineties.

Jan

The essay on Grøndahl was published in the fall of 2003 in NRC Handelsblad, if I'm not mistaken.